


Letter #25 | A Wasted Favor

by blackrose_juri



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: 2nd-person POV (Harrow's), Angst, CW: Ianthe (I'm not in the discord but I think this tag is hilarious), Cunnilingus, F/F, Long-form porn, Psychological musings, Shameless Smut, So much angst, Toxic relationship/power imbalance, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:55:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26206789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackrose_juri/pseuds/blackrose_juri
Summary: There’s a twenty-fifth letter, and Ianthe uses it to coax Harrow into submission. What Ianthe doesn’t know, and what Harrow won’t admit aloud, is that she would’ve obliged her anyway, in all of her detachment and fragility. Post-HtN Ch. 31, slight canon divergence for Harrow's letters.
Relationships: Harrowhark Nonagesimus/Ianthe Tridentarius
Comments: 6
Kudos: 77





	Letter #25 | A Wasted Favor

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I've been re-reading HtN lately, and Act 3 always gets to me. This weird, little idea came to me while I was interested in exploring Harrow's feelings of desperation and frustration during this particular stretch of the story ... and also because I am shamelessly thirsty for the Ianthe/Harrow dynamic, terrible as it is. 
> 
> I'll add an additional content note here for dub-con because, although I don't think it entirely fits, the power dynamic is as unhealthy as ever, and I understand that different people may respond to it differently.

“Kneel, Nonagesimus.”

There had probably been a time—a time you’d abandoned, left somewhere forty billion lightyears away in the shadowy depths of Drearburh, in the preserved ruins of Caanan House—when you had dreamed that the sacred, safe-haven of the Emperor Undying would be a place where you’d spend your days feeling utterly invincible.

That other, lost incarnation of Harrowhark Nonagesimus had imagined herself strutting the halls where God himself had walked, flaunting his colors around her shoulders like holy tail feathers to some monastic peacock. That Harrowhark had kissed knucklebones held together by thread and fantasized, ecstatic, that one day, she would display her Lyctoral prowess and vast knowledge of theorems before God, and he would smile at her, pleased and impressed, and she’d drop to her knees, humbled and flattered beyond belief.

That Harrowhark was a stranger to you, now. She’d been a stranger to you for months, and she became even more of a stranger with every sunless day you passed in the Mithraeum. She’d kept secrets from you that she’d shared with the scheming Princess of Ida, of all souls. She’d handed you over—handed herself over, supine and desperate—to a murderess and left you a lost, sad, broken thing. What a cruel joke it was, that Ianthe Tridentarius was the only bridge you had to that old Harrow.

You thought about this often, and the thought never failed to sour.

Your decoupling from this dead self reached what was surely its peak as you knelt wordlessly on Ianthe’s bedroom floor, and she stood before you, tall and lanky and luminous. You knelt and placed your hands on your knees, clenching them into fists. You knelt, and you asked yourself if the old Harrowhark would have ever in a myriad-and-a-half followed such a command sprung from the lips of someone who was not God and who was certainly not your beloved corpse. Your fragile, traitorous brain returned only uncertainty.

Ianthe had spoken the words with languid authority, with that smug, downward-lilting voice of hers enunciating your House name like a lewd oath, and you’d obeyed her. By some miracle, she didn’t take the opportunity to gloat—though she was probably saving that for later—as she stared down at you with swirling, low-lidded, stolen eyes. Those long legs, ghostlike in the pale blue of the habitation lighting, carried her a few paces away from you, and you followed them with your gaze, tracing upwards from her ankles, to the flesh of her calves, to the backs of her knees, to the hem of that thin nightgown that licked at her thighs with each step. As she spun on her heels to face you again, you looked away and down at the sheet of flimsy that you’d let fall only a moment ago, lying inches away from where your knees were pressed together on her soft, plush rug.

The old Harrow and her _letters_. Though you kept your share of them tucked into your exoskeleton—which you still wore, even now—you could hardly claim them to be yours anymore. They were hers, products of her need to puppeteer and delegate, and she’d chosen you as courier and recipient both. She’d made a courier of Ianthe, too, in some conspiratorial meeting that eluded your memory with searing aggression.

> _To be given to Harrowhark at Ianthe’s discretion._

Letter #25 was a dagger of that Harrow’s making, and she’d placed it in Ianthe’s hand with your name on it. It was an insult, a degradation, but it had hardly mattered; you’d walked forward into it willingly.

> _ADDRESSING THE LADY HARROWHARK NONAGESIMUS, KNOWN AS THE REVEREND DAUGHTER BY HER OWN DESIRE, NOW HARROWHARK THE FIRST, FROM THE SAME, NOW DEAD._
> 
> _LETTER #25 OF 25._

Ianthe sat at the edge of her bed.

“Stay there, Harry,” she instructed, “and watch me.”

You grimaced at _Harry_ , but you held your twitching tongue. You feared you’d say too much for your own good, if you said anything. Her eyes gleamed, and you felt as though she were gazing through you, passing that look like a wink to a Harrow who wasn’t there. Or perhaps she was simply thrilled to see you grimace. Her construct hand idled itself with a long, sand-colored lock of hair between the index and middle phalanges.

“Oh, don’t look so miserable, Harrow. You think I don’t notice it when you stare at me, then look away before you think I might turn around?” You furrowed your brow at that unwarranted observation, loathing the morsel of validity you couldn’t deny that it held. She laughed at you with arrogant mirth—a low, sickening sound. “You can be painfully unsubtle sometimes, you know. You’d think you sprung right out of a tacky romance novel. I almost feel bad, watching you.”

“If you’ve brought me here to—,”

“Relax, you over-assumptive stick. I’m not going to tease you about it, as entertaining as that might be.” Never mind that she was doing exactly that; her eyes aimed themselves at yours like marvelous, sharpened amethysts, and she leaned forward, letting her nightgown gap in the front just above your line of sight. “No, no—I have better plans for you. I might as well be doing _you_ the favor, honestly.” You scoffed, but she continued, inspecting her fingernails, “As much as your obstinance amuses me, tonight’s not the night for emotional wrestling, so you just … be quiet, and be _good_.”

“Would that you could understand how viscerally you disgust me,” was what you said, but you still knelt.

“Do I? Why don’t we put that to the test and see how you really feel?” Her voice lowered and slowed, determined and conspiratorial. “I want you to _watch_ me, now. Look at me the way I know you’ll never admit to wishing you could.”

The Princess of Ida smiled at you in a way that no one ever had before. There was not a hint of coyness or girlishness in that smile; not a hint of shame in the curl of her lips, despite what she’d just demanded of you. Her expression melted into something roguish and expectant, and her cheeks did not flush, not even the slightest bit. She looked at you with naked desire and dared you to look back at her.

You … struggled. Your hands clenched tighter until your fingernails pressed crescents into your palms, even with them bitten down to the quick. You failed to hold her gaze as if she’d handed you hot coals with her lambent eyes. All of Mercy’s tutelage on steering your hormones could do nothing to stop the heat that rose to your cheeks, and you—you, in Ianthe’s bedroom, with your face unpainted—squirmed to think of Ianthe’s delight at the sight of you blushing.

To your shock, she kept her promise and didn’t mock you any further; she waited instead with those asymmetrical hands curling around the hem of her nightgown. Perhaps she didn’t want to push her luck now that she had you there. Or, perhaps it was the letter that’d given her the will to be patient with you, given her the confidence in knowing you’d follow its instruction faithfully.

> _WRIT OF IMMEDIATE SERVICE_
> 
> _Upon reception of this letter, you will grant Ianthe Tridentarius one expedited favor of her choosing. So long as your life is not in imminent danger, you will abandon any and all immediate tasks and place yourself at her service. You will do so with haste and without complaint. You will follow her instructions carefully._
> 
> _Be aware that Tridentarius is privy to the contents of this letter, and remember the contents of Letter #2, Guideline #5. As I wrote to you then, I will not try to justify this agreement. Instead, I will say that it was jointly made with the acknowledgement that I am—and by extension, that you are—known to be difficult, and some favors leave no room for difficult accomplices. Consider this letter, effectively, a gag, and wear it smartly, for your sake._
> 
> _I am certain this letter finds you at your inconvenience. I am certain this letter is being used to twist your arm, and I write this to you with twisted arm now. Invoke the authority of the Tomb if you must deny her, but remember where you stand, and choose your battles wisely._

And the post-script, written in a different hand:

> **_P.S. Translated from the original Ninth, this means, “Shut up and do Ianthe’s bidding.”_ **

And so you’d been summoned. The old Harrow had whored you to Ianthe in the vagueness of her message, and somehow, extraordinarily, Ianthe had sat on that letter for months without shanking you with it.

However, it wasn’t your discomfort with the contents of the letter that’d made your body tense; it was something far more internal—a reflection, a terrible realization. What had really brought you to Ianthe’s room, had made you lower yourself in front of her _(—and had you, now, slowly unclenching your fists and lifting your eyes to capture the image of the Lyctor sitting on her bed, sliding that silken fabric inch-by-inch up her thighs—_ ) was not the instruction that the old, dead Harrowhark had scrawled on a piece of flimsy. Neither Ianthe Tridentarius nor the absent Reverend Daughter possessed the unsettling knowledge that you held now, deep in your sepulchral heart:

You would have done this for her, tonight, with or without her invocation of Letter #25. If she would have come to you those few minutes ago, as you’d stared naked-faced at your reflection, feeling wholly untethered, seeing a stranger in your mirror, and asked you, tender-voiced, to keep her company until morning, you would have said, “ _Yes_.” If she would have looked at you with pleading eyes and whispered a request for your touch ( _—that horrible buttercup shift of hers she pulled far enough back that the whole of her thighs were bare to you, and she parted her legs, just barely, and shrugged to let one shoulder slip into nakedness as you watched, frozen—_ ), you would have said, “ _Yes_.” If she would have come to you, breathless and frustrated, and told you that she ached for the attention of your tongue, you would have said, “ _Tell me how,_ ” and you would have said it with hunger in your voice.

Unlike that old Harrowhark, who’d felt comfortable in her genius, who’d found security in keeping a tight leash on anyone she could, you were a Harrow who’d become intimately familiar with powerlessness. You’d regained a sliver of dignity after learning how to keep the Saint of Duty at bay, but you couldn’t quite say that it was power that you missed, anymore. Power had become a relic of a bygone era, for you ( _—those pale thighs shifted away from each other, farther, farther, and you wondered how it must’ve felt, the soft lace of her nightgown falling between them and shifting like gossamer over that delicate flesh—_ ).

What you missed instead, you fragile creature, was being _needed_. You missed fulfilling needs and fulfilling them flawlessly. You missed having the answers for impossible problems ( _—she teased, gathering that pool of fabric between her legs in a fist with her flesh hand—_ ), being praised for your immaculate work ( _—she lifted her gown, bold, shameless, filthy—_ ), and receiving grateful kisses at your knuckles in the aftermath ( _—and she showed you how she ached for you, revealed herself to be slick, glistening, wet_ ).

You missed being a task, a tool, a catalyst, and a savior, uniquely useful.

You longed to have a purpose.

Who else could do this for Ianthe, but you?

The other Lyctors in the Mithraeum had thrown at you their varied shades of apathy and pity, but to Ianthe, you had proven yourself necessary, ingenious, and she wore your craftsmanship on her sleeve. You were rarely asked to do anything, anymore, but Ianthe was asking you now in her own manner, by way of a favor that she’d unknowingly wasted. Part of you bristled to see she’d found a method of asking that hadn’t required her supplication, but you found some solace in knowing she hadn’t figured you’d do this freely.

She asked you now to satisfy a need with mesmeric eyes and gilded distal tips reaching down, curling inward between her parted thighs. Your breath hitched as you watched her make them disappear.

You were hypnotized. You felt hot. The knowing amusement in her breathy laugh lingered at the shuddering ossicles in your ears and tickled the fine hairs at the nape of your neck. Those same two, promiscuous construct fingers slipped back out of her, slowly, and she ran her thumb over the wet tips in deliberate circles, watching you watch her with your wide eyes.

You trembled, absolutely terrified by how beautifully the sparse light caught that false hand. Ianthe was a portrait, picturesque in her dishevelment—barely clothed, blond hair spilling down past her naked collar, devilish excitement on her face, golden phalanges and carpals scintillating, idiosyncratic, like honey-dipped jewels.

Frightened as you were, you were unable to recall a time when desire and terror hadn’t been emotional bedfellows. They’d cleaved themselves together from the moment you opened that sacred tomb and found them there, entangled.

“Come here.”

You dragged yourself to her at her call like a servant, entirely lacking grace, on your hands and knees. You raised yourself as you occupied the space between her legs, and she wasted little time in reaching for you, pressing the fingers of her flesh hand—the one you loathed—against your pulse point. Her warm touch made you acutely aware of your throbbing artery, and you swallowed as she drew her fingers up the side of your neck, along your jaw, under your chin. You shuddered a little under her exploration, though from disgust or pleasure, you couldn’t tell. You were so close to her, with both of her knees inches away from your shoulders, and she was bare to you, with her nightgown pulled back far beyond the point of meaningful coverage. You were close enough to smell her; the scent of her arousal hung thickly in the air, a heady elixir that, like lips on the neck of your fragile ego, stoked your desire with the knowledge that _you_ had done this to her, and she needed your task-oriented devotion to put her back together.

Ianthe lifted your face, a gesture sudden, precise, and self-seeking. Your attention was torn between her dilated, delighted stare and the hovering, skeletal hand that represented the last, pathetic sliver of accomplishment to which you clung. She noticed this and lifted further, guiding you back to her, pressing her thumb into your chin before sliding it up and onto your bottom lip. She pressed until your lips were slightly parted—you let them part for her—and she glowed, absolutely phosphorescent in the wake of that tiny act of submission.

She leaned over you wolfishly, making you crane your neck, and she mused to you, “You’ve always had such a pretty little mouth.” You knew that it was no genuine compliment, that it was the cloying product of Ianthe’s sick perversion, but you were a desperate animal seeking a purpose, and you accepted it with your breath unsteady. You were already gone, you poor thing; you’d told yourself before, in your obstinance, that you didn’t want her drunken kisses, that you didn’t want her lying beside you, but you’d been depleted, and you couldn’t lie to yourself about wanting her now, perhaps as badly as she wanted you.

It was with that loathsome concession that you closed your eyes and let her guide her slick, gilded fingers past your lips. Tilting your head slightly, you took them into your mouth, down to the proximal joints, and closed your lips around them. Her human hand suddenly seemed much warmer and softer by contrast, though the way she held you was possessive, and far from kind. Your sensitive Ninth tongue learned two new tastes at once—one sharp and metallic, the other unexpectedly sweet—and you slipped it between her fingertips as she drew them back, stimulating the artificial nerve endings you’d given her. You heard her hum.

“Open your eyes, Nonagesimus. _Look_ at me.”

You never understood what it was about your eyes that made them targets of Ianthe’s fixation—they were distinctly Drearburh, which she’d faithfully derided as backwater—but her seeking of them, her invocation of your House name in this context made you clench your knees together. Languidly, you half-parted your eyelids as her digits sought your mouth again, and upon meeting her wild, opportunistic stare, you felt more naked than ever. You were on your knees, tasting her fingers in your mouth—her bones to your flesh, your area of necromantic expertise trysting with hers. How intimate a thought, that you could utterly rend each other like this with the smallest of gestures.

She extricated her bone fingers, drawing you toward her, and released your chin.

You whispered, “Pervert,” in the breath that followed, and you knit your brows, but they wavered; she was tangling her construct in your hair.

“Meet kettle.” Ianthe quirked her colorless eyebrow at you, and you hated her for it, but your cheeks flushed all the same.

She shifted her hips forward. She dropped her flesh hand to the bed and leaned on her arm. You understood. You leaned forward, too, and placed your open palms on her inner thighs. You felt them tighten.

She started to say something else, likely some awful quip, but you didn’t wait to hear it; you gripped her by the meat of her thighs and pressed your lips to her wet, eager cunt. You kissed her there, and she twitched; you sucked, and she gasped. You attended to her with a scholar’s tongue, spurred on by your need to impress, to attain mastery, to find what made her writhe and dig relentlessly into it. Better to imagine it as an academic pursuit than to hazard the thought of your own enjoyment, and it was just like you to think yourself above salaciousness with your head between a woman’s legs. You focused on the need in her and convinced yourself you had something to gain by coaxing every strangled sigh from her pale mouth.

Luckily for you and your tenuous story, Ianthe was a willing teacher—or, perhaps, simply unwilling to find herself on the receiving end of disappointing sex. She guided your head with her fist in your hair and ground her slender hips against you, and you surrendered to her rhythm. She pushed you down hard as your tongue slid past her entrance and drew lavish circles. You let her use your lips and tongue like tools, and like the perfect tool, you persisted tirelessly. You saw the task of her to its end.

And for as long as she held out, you felt you had purpose, again.

Maybe that was why your chest ached with a twinge of disappointment when Ianthe began to tremble, to twitch her construct hand at the back of your skull; when she swore a blasphemous oath and groaned with your House name on her lips. You knew it was over, and all that was left in the aftermath was dwindling heat and an ache between your legs that you couldn’t—wouldn’t—share with her.

Ianthe didn’t look at you in the end; she merely released you, collapsed backwards onto her mattress, and laughed breathlessly. She used you up and discarded you, left you kneeling with a dripping chin. And maybe that was for the best.

“Who could’ve predicted,” said the Princess of Ida, wiping the sweat from her brow as she looked at the ceiling, “that a Ninth House bone witch would be so eager with her tongue?”

There it was; she had, in fact, been saving her damned gloating for later.

You wiped her off your chin. “Are you satisfied, Tridentarius?” you snapped, surprised by your own vitriol.

“ _Satisfied_?” She sprung upright, and her face was a loathsome sight in the clearing of the haze. “Harrowhark … you poor baby. I’ll _never_ be satisfied. I’m already disappointed that I didn’t make you write me more of those letters. ‘Hello, yes, Reverend Daughter? I’ll take four free fucks to go, thank you,’ et cetera.”

You could never let her know. You could never let her know how far you’d grown from that old Harrowhark, who’d thought she’d have any dignity left, who’d thought it’d take an act of coercion to make her spend a night on her knees. You could never.

So you rose to your feet, and you overcompensated. “ _Fuck_ you.”

Ianthe had already returned her skirt to its correct place and was smoothing the silken fabric when she glanced up at you. “Fuck me, Harrow?” She crossed one leg over the other, then crossed her long arms in her lap—you’d have been impressed with her prompt return to composure if it weren’t so distressing. You read challenge and mockery in the coolness of her eyes. “You already have.”

You glowered at her, clenching your fists again, but you knew that this defeat was on you.

You’d been a fool to hope the comfort would linger. Now you had to shoulder the withdrawal.

You hardened your heart, as if with enamel, and you straightened your shoulders, gathering what remained of your self-respect. You turned on your heel, squeezed out your coldest chuckle, and you jabbed:

“You taste bitter.”

She didn’t seem convinced.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> \--  
> Horrible, additional notes which you should definitely ignore:
> 
> \- Writing in 2nd person is quite strange. It's like writing from Harrow's POV and writing an Ianthe x Reader fic (truly frightening) at the same time, depending on how closely you identify with Harrow here. So ... I guess, you're welcome, if you're into the idea of being topped by Ianthe, and I'm deeply sorry, regardless of what you're into.
> 
> \- Alternate title candidate: _Ianthe Poses for Frontline Titties of the Fifth_


End file.
